Excerpts from ABC7Chicago.com:
An 88-year-old woman and 70-year-old man were found dead in an apartment fire early Tuesday morning in Chicago’s Old Irving Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side after CPD and CFD responded just before 2:30 a.m. to the 3600-block of North Kedvale Avenue for a reported fire in a two-story building there. The two bodies were found on the first floor of the building after firefighters had extinguished the blaze.
Fire officials said a mother and son living in the building didn’t have any heat for many months and were using space heaters to stay warm, and didn’t have any working smoke detectors. They were longtime residents in the building and were well-known on the block.
CFD said the home was overfilled with possessions and was hard to get around in. Frozen fire hydrants also complicated matters while they tried to fight the fire.
Investigators are still working to determine an exact cause for the blaze, but their initial investigation shows smoking materials might have started it.
— Chicago Fire Media (@CFDMedia) February 8, 2022